A somewhat surprising pair for the first attack, at least on the part of Matti MANNINEN. The sprinter is joined by Sakari LEHTINEN, one of the favourites today. Jesse KAISLAVUO thinks about bridging across, but ultimately opts to have the Genii Hyundai N domestiques chase the move down.
The issue with that decision is that neither Samuel POKÄLÄ nor Jaakko SILLANKORVA are particularly strong climbers. Thus, when LEHTINEN eventually decided that it was time to drop MANNINEN, a task completed with much aplomb, there had been nearly no progress made towards reining him in.
With victory disappearing up the road despite the efforts of his domestiques, Joonas HENTTALA had little choice but to take matters into his own hands. He easily dispatched of MANNINEN before closing up to LEHTINEN. Both KAISLAVOU and Jaako HÄNNINEN were brought along with this move.
Just as HENTTALA though he had finished fighting his way up to LEHTINEN's wheel, the latter accelerated again. HENTTALA tried, and failed, to follow. With about 5km of climbing still before them, LEHTINEN had a gap of ~15". With HENTTALA's body language screaming defeat it had fallen to HÄNNINEN to lead the case. KAISLAVUO was swinging behind this duo.
Having had a moment to recover, HENTTALA made one last desperate attempt to bridge across but again fell just short. A masterclass from LEHTINEN. In the final few kilometres he showed what he was really capable of and extended the gap out beyond a minute. He might have been too tired to raise his arms for the cameras, but his performance was a statement in of itself. Dominance!
Finnish National Championships '23 Individual Time Trial
He wasn't able to help his teammate to the win in the road race, but that was never going to stop POKÄLÄ from securing victory in his own discipline. He came through the rain with a solid time of 1h00'08
Finnish National Championships '23 
